If Super Motherload is the sort of game that we can expect from Sony's recent love affair with indie games, I think gamers are going to be pretty divided on whether or not the company's new push for PSN downloadable fare is going to work out best for consumers.
Now that the PlayStation 4 has been on store shelves for a few weeks, many gamers have had a chance to chew through some of the best games the PS4 currently has to offer, and must now turn to PSN releases like XGen Studios' Super Motherload to hold them over until a new wave of content heads to the PlayStation 4. Unfortunately, Super Motherload marks yet another downloadable PS4 release that feels as if it could have used a bit more work before making its public debut.
Super Motherload is a game about mining. From start to (nearly) finish, players will dig below the surface of Marts, returning to base on occasion to sell whatever ore you find and buy whatever supplies you think you'll need to dig deeper on your next excursion. What you encounter will change on each play through, thanks to the game's procedural world generation, and the availablity (or lack thereof) of the game's most valuable ore will direct impact how quickly you're able to upgrade the drilling machine that you'll pilot throughout Super Motherload. However, the loose narrative that unfolds while playing the game won't change, no matter how many times you restart the Super Motherload story.
With each trip to the surface, you'll find yourself netting increasingly lucrative payouts that allow you to afford a variety of upgrades; including everything from larger fuel tanks to thicker hulls, and even a portable smelter that allows you to combine ore on-the-fly to increase the selling value of your cargo. You'll also have the ability to purchase and create an increasingly diverse and more-powerful array of explosives as the game progresses, though only a handful actually prove useful in most situations. If you're playing in Hardcore mode, you'll have to be a bit more careful with your fuel too, as complete depletion will ultimately cost you whatever upgrades you've already purchase for your rig. Those playing in Normal mode will simply find that their drill stops functioning after you've exhausted your fuel supply, but there's no loss of progress or other setbacks of any kind.
As you work your way deeper and deeper below the Martian surface, you'll unlock additional bases and upgrades, making it quite a bit easier to continue to digging even further down into the depths of the Red Planet. A handful of text-based cut scenes will occasionally force you to take a break from the oh-so-exhilarating job of finding and extracting a variety of ores; but the Super Motherload narrative suffers from being both entirely nonsensical and something substantially less than gripping.
Thankfully, Super Motherload makes up for its shortcomings with surprisingly addictive gameplay. In fact, I found the actual experience of playing Super Motherload enjoyable enough not to notice that several hours had passed during my first sit-down with the game, and enjoyed a similar "loss" of time during the only other play session that a friend and I needed to complete the story mode.
Super Motherload can get a bit tedious when played solo, thanks to the extra fuel you'll sometimes have to waste to facilitate the smelting of certain ores, navigating the game's various obstacles becomes quite a bit easier with a partner. With the added income from better ore combinations, you'll find yourself working through the upgrade tree much faster than your average solo session, giving you plenty of incentive to take advantage of Super Motherload's (local) four-player co-op support.
The decision to include a final boss encounter - especially one that represents such a drastic departure from the entire game up to that point - is also regrettable to say the least, but not one that necessarily entirely overshadows Super Motherload's more interesting aspects. I don't want to get too far into spoiler territory, but XGen Studios' decision to make players retravel the final few thousand meters to Mars' core before each attempt at the boss gets old pretty f-king fast too.
Super Motherload Review - Final Verdict
There's just no beating around the bush on this one. Even if you enjoy your time with Super Motherload, I cannot envision a scenario in which anyone plays this game and walks away from the experience without a substantial feeling of disappointment to go hand-in-hand with whatever enjoyment they derived from the experience. There are just too many areas where it feels like the game could have used a bit more work: from Super Motherload's barely-there tech tree to a story so uninteresting that it's random interruptions actually impede some players' ability to have fun with the game.
Super Motherload is the sort of game that you're either going to love or hate, and I suspect there will be very few opinions that land anywhere in the middle. Personally, I'm looking forward to sitting down with a couple of friends, starting up a fresh game, and seeing what sort of progress we can make on the next randomly-generated world that Super Motherload provides us. I'm not sure I'd recommend playing the game on your own though. It's quite a bit more tedious without a friend to poke fun at the game's shortcomings along with you.
Super Motherload isn't the sort of release that you'll take a casual liking to; you're either going to feel the game's hooks sink in within minutes, or wonder why you just wasted money on what feels very much like the PlayStation 4 equivalent of a flash game. While Super Motherload does offer clear improvements over its predecessor, I'm honestly not certain that, if asked, I could offer up any sort of legitimate reason as to why the game actually deserved a PS4 release.
To be clear, Super Motherload is far from the worst game to emerge during 2013. But, if XGen Studios was actually looking for anything other than a quick way to cash-in on an out-of-date property - at the expense of an overly-enthusiastic PS4 launch crowd - they've got a pretty terrible way of showing it. It doesn't compare to the absurdity of charging $50 for Angry Birds: Star Wars, but I don't honestly know how anybody at XGen Studios could think that Super Motherload justifies its fifteen dollar price tag. Until the price comes down, we can't recommend Super Motherload for anyone other than hardcore fans of the browser game that inspired it.
Score 2.5/5
Have you already had the opportunity to spend a few hours (or more) playing Super Motherload? Can't believe we only gave the game a 2.5? Want to point out something you did/didn't like about the game that wasn't mentioned in our Super Motherload review?
Let us know in the comments section!
